Scripture Daily

Context No. 1192 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 5:7-12: in context

7“Therefore the Lord GOD says: ‘Because you are more turbulent than the nations that are around you, and have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my ordinances, neither have followed the ordinances of the nations that are around you; 8therefore the Lord GOD says: ‘Behold, I, even I, am against you; and I will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations. 9I will do in you that which I have not done, and which I will not do anything like it any more, because of all your abominations. 10Therefore the fathers will eat the sons within you, and the sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments on you; and I will scatter the whole remnant of you to all the winds. 11Therefore as I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things, and with all your abominations, therefore I will also diminish you. My eye won’t spare, and I will have no pity. 12A third part of you will die with the pestilence, and they will be consumed with famine within you. A third part will fall by the sword around you. A third part I will scatter to all the winds, and will draw out a sword after them.

God pronounces a devastating judgment on Jerusalem, and the charge is unexpected: you have been more turbulent and rebellious than the nations around you, not even keeping the standards the pagan nations kept. Therefore, God says, I am against you, and I will do among you what I have never done and will never do again, because of your abominations. The judgment described is horrific, famine so severe it drives people to unthinkable acts, a third dying by plague, a third by the sword, a third scattered to the winds.

This is one of the hard passages, and its severity is tied to its central accusation: Jerusalem was judged more harshly precisely because it had been given more. God says his own people had become worse than the pagan nations around them, failing to keep even the ordinary standards those nations observed. The people entrusted with God's law, meant to be a light to the nations, had sunk below the nations. And that is why the judgment is so severe: to whom much is given, much is required. It is a sobering principle that runs through scripture, that privilege raises the standard, that those who have known God's truth and law are held to more, not less, than those who never had it. There is a warning here for anyone who has been given much light, the church, the believer, the one who knows better. The greater the privilege, the greater the accountability, and a people who had God's word and lived worse than those without it drew a judgment the pagans did not. This is not comfortable, but it is honest: God takes the sins of his own people, who should have known better, with terrible seriousness, precisely because of what they had been given.

Have I taken lightly the privilege of knowing God's truth, and do I grasp that greater light means greater accountability, so that what is tolerable in ignorance is not tolerable in those who know better?

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